After 2 Weeks With the iPhone 16, This Is My Favorite Feature

Don’t call it a filter. That’s what I kept telling myself when trying out the iPhone 16’s new version of Photographic Styles, which surprisingly ended up being my favorite new feature on Apple’s latest phone.

Photographic Styles are visual effects that essentially change the color and tone of an image, and they’ve been around since the iPhone 13 generation. But Apple improved the version on the iPhone 16 so it would better understand colors, highlights, skin undertones and shadows. And the difference is noticeable; in fact, it makes the older version feel basic by comparison.

At a time when the tech industry is buzzing about generative AI, or AI that can create content in response to prompts, it’s refreshing to see an upgrade that improves on one of the most basic yet essential uses for our phones: taking photos. A CNET survey in collaboration with YouGov found that camera features are the third biggest motivation behind smartphone upgrades, further underscoring that camera improvements matter.

Though phone makers tend to improve camera hardware and image processing software each year — such as the better low light performance on the iPhone 16’s utlrawide camera — the new Photographic Styles feature in some ways feels more impactful. Year-over-year camera improvements can feel incremental and may be apparent only in very specific shooting circumstances, but Photographic Styles lets you change images in a way that’s immediately apparent and gratifying.

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Using the iPhone 16’s Photographic Styles

Photographic Styles may sound a lot like filters, but the updated version of Apple’s tool goes beyond just casting a blanket effect over an image. Instead, it applies an aesthetic to a scene based on the specific colors in the photo, which in my experience has made it much easier to give snapshots a dramatic look with essentially no editing.

Photographic Styles, which are available only for the iPhone 16 lineup including the Pro and Pro Max, are baked into the camera app, and you can apply them either before you take a photo or after. From the photo option in the camera viewfinder, just tap the icon that looks like a square filled with dots. Or if you’re using the Camera Control button, swipe through the miniature menu in the overlay until you see the option for styles.

Apple provides a range of choices depending on the feel you’re going for that either bring out certain skin undertones or provide a mood-based aesthetic. Some of the skin undertone examples include Cool Rose, Neutral, Rose Gold and Amber, while Vibrant, Luminous, Quiet and Dramatic are examples of the mood-based choices. You can set a specific style as your default, so that the iPhone’s camera always applies that effect without you having to turn it on manually.

Some of Apple’s Photographic Styles are more subtle than others, particularly the skin undertone-focused ones like Cool Rose and Amber, which primarily impact the subject of the photo.

But I tend to prefer the more striking mood-based Photographic Styles that boost the color or contrast, such as Vibrant, Dramatic and Stark Black & White. Others, like Ethereal and Quiet, seem to play with an image’s lighting, giving photos an almost washed-out feel that makes them look a little vintage, like an overexposed polaroid.

What’s even more interesting is that you can tweak the tone and color for each individual style, making the styles highly customizable. You’re essentially creating your own custom color and tone profile for the camera, which makes it feel so much more individualized than ever before. It makes me feel like I have more creative control over my images, despite the fact that I don’t have a background in photography or photo editing.

In the future, I’d like to see Apple provide additional skin undertone options with more variety; I found that a lot of the current choices look very similar. It’s also not immediately obvious that you can alter the tone and color by tapping the selected style.
Here are some of my favorite Photographic Style shots.

Vibrant

Stark Black & White

Quiet

Cozy

Gold

Photographic Styles is another sign phone photos are getting more customizable

If one thing’s become clear over the last two years, it’s that smartphone giants want to give us more control over the photos we take on our phones — for better or worse.

We now live in an era in which you can erase objects from images, add objects that weren’t even there, pick your favorite facial expression and add it to another image, or resize or change elements of a photo. I’m mostly referring to AI-based photo editing tools that have appeared on Google’s Pixel phones over the last two years, which are seemingly designed to help you capture the perfect moment even if it didn’t happen. (Apple is also introducing a tool called Clean Up for removing parts of an image, as part of Apple Intelligence.)

Maybe that’s why Photographic Styles have struck such a chord with me. The feature also wants to help you create the perfect image, but in a much different way, one that feels more creative and less reality-bending. You could argue that altering tones and color profiles is also inauthentic and contributes to the chase for the perfect photo, regardless of what the scene actually looks like.

But the idea of taking an existing photo and giving it bolder colors or more contrast is much more appealing to me than changing the scene itself, which is why I think Apple is on to something with Photographic Styles.

Is Photographic Styles worth buying a new iPhone for? No. But it’s an underrated feature that, when combined with other upgrades, will make the iPhone 16’s camera feel like a leap forward for folks coming from an older iPhone.